Universal & Islands (Day 16)

I’ve kinda scrapped the summary because I’m not getting a chance throughout the day to add anything. So it’s all or nothing from here on in (not long to go now though :)

Up early-ish and headed for the hotel pool as the kids really wanted another shot at it. The water, even at 9 in the morning was pretty hot, but we found it difficult to find some loungers (oh you put a towel on that, it must be yours then, even though you’ve been at breakfast for the last two hours :|). Had about an hour before we got back to the room and got ready for the day ahead.

Back to the Island… (s of Adventure, oh and Universal too :)

Yeah after a few rest and shopping days bunched together, its good to get back to the thrills, spills & queues of the theme parks. Second trip to these parks in particular and we’ll likely go again before we leave in at the end of the week :( Stopped by Subway prior to the parks, to grab a quick bite for lunch. One of the boys favourites and they have a load more options, including adding spinach and guacamole - actually they might have that in the UK I haven’t been in in such a long time. Was pretty good actually and the coffee, which seemed to be some sort of hazelnut, was immense.

We also kinda lied today and said it was Graces birthday, so that she could get some attention (and free stuff if it was on offer). She found it hilarious and at points I really thoug~~h~~t she thought she was five! Anyway, started off in Universal Studios and made our way directly to the back of the park. We deliberately missed out Hogwarts Express last time to do each of the parks exclusively, but now was the time to catch the train at Kings Cross and on to platform 9 ¾ to do some park hopping. This train is a fairly new attraction which runs between Diagon Alley in Universal and Hogsmeade in Islands. Absolute genius whoever came up with that and the train was a full on experience of what it would be like to travel to Howarts they way the students do. Loved it, full of chocolate frogs and flying cars - it was as authentic as you could imagine it! Once we got off the train on the other side we headed towards The Forbidden Journey, at which point my dad got really confused, he thought we just went on a ride and not travel to the other park :) Yeah but don’t know what else to say about this Harry Potter Ride, I could just do this all day if it was up to me - absolutely amazing! :)

Since we were now in Islands, we got some Butterbeer (as you do) and decided to pick out our other fav rides. So with that, we headed off to to do Spiderman. After which we then doubled-back and bumped into Captain America, who seem to be a little less than enthusiastic about my Batman tee, even though I had a frickin’ Cap belt buckle too! Kids were wearing Iron Man stuff though so that kinda made up for it. He was really chatty with the kids and didn’t seem to be in any rush even with a line building, which was cool (guessing he wanted to know all about the present day eh? ;) Cheesy photo (his doing, I just wanted a shot of that shield), and then we moved on to Dudley Do-Rights Rip Saw Falls. No one except Patrick had wanted to do this, so I went along with him. Water rides with some steep plummets. It was really good but both me and PG got absolutely drenched (and not for the first time today as you’ll find out).

Thunderbolts and lightening, very very frightening!

Back on to Hogwarts Express and back to Universal and Diagon Alley. It was getting really dark and breezy so a storm was imminent. We jumped on to The Simpsons ride as soon as we could. They were playing The Simpsons episodes in the queue and it was the one with The Doc and the time travelling Delorean in it! The Simpsons ride is on the same site as the old Back To The Future ride so it was a nice little nostalgic tip o’ the hat :) Not as good as the old ride (don’t think anything will come close to that) but its still pretty brilliant and hilarious both in the build up and the ride (even with having been on the ride several times now).

After the ride we were met with the storm to end all storms (ok, slight exaggeration but it was pretty bad). I managed to retrieve the buggy from the jaws of the relentless, thundering behemoth (seriously, it was that bad, kinda) to get the raincoats, only to find I had left mine in the car. We knew what the weather would be like, even though it kicked in a little later and went to the effort to put in the rain jackets, but forgot to include mine. We had already decided to leave at that point so it was a trek through the park in the pouring rain to get to the exit and car park. We went to the hotel to get changed before dinner once to be met by a barrage of police and firetrucks trying to put out a huge fire in a hotel only a few doors down. Apparently started by lightning! Eek, everyone got out safe though there were loads of activity when we returned from dinner than night.

Applesbee’s for dinner, one I really wanted to try since we gt there. Good food, poor service, shame. With the weather as it is, we had to make some last minute changes to tomorrows schedule. We were originally going to catch the fireworks at Hollywood Studios but now we will be hitting the park early and doing all the Frozen stuff. Mum & Dads last day here tomorrow, so should be a good one if a little sad.